Owen Filer, believed to be the oldest man in Wales, turned 107 and says he lived on fish and chips

Owen Filer was born in Pontnewydd, near Cwmbran, on 19 October 1919. On Monday he turned 107. He is believed to be the oldest man in Wales.

He had his party early, on Friday, at the Tredegar Veterans Support Hub. SSAFA, the Armed Forces charity, gave him a certificate and a trophy. His daughter Anne Messore, who is 80, came with him. He has four children, 10 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren.

The secret

Reporters asked him the usual question. This was his answer:

I’ve never overeaten… I lived on fish and chips. Fish and chips, a full meal, a scoop full of chips and a fish, and it was cod and hake, it was genuine. You can’t afford to buy it now, can you?Owen Filer, on Friday, to WalesOnline and the BBC

He also said there was “no secret recipe, except that I always worked all my life”. He left school at 14 and went to work at the Cwmbran Gardens Hotel.

The Western Telegraph asked him the same question at the same party. He told them: “Homemade Welsh cakes.”

Last December he told reporters it was “never really growing up”, and a thimble of Scotch before bed.

The war

He was called up at 20. He served with the 9th Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, then with the Military Police, and was posted to Bombay in 1944. He was still in India on VJ Day in 1945. He is believed to be the last surviving member of the Corps of Military Police (India).

While he was out there, he heard that his father was seriously ill. SSAFA arranged for him to come home, but he didn’t get back in time. Last year he told SSAFA volunteers in Cwmbran about it, more than 80 years later. That is why they helped throw Friday’s party.

Friday night

Later on Friday, Military Police veterans in red berets escorted him to the Market Hall Cinema in Brynmawr, which says it is the oldest cinema in Wales. There was a red carpet, and people sang Happy Birthday as he walked up to the door.

He had picked the film himself. It was One Good Turn, a 1955 comedy starring Norman Wisdom, one of his favourite actors.

Asda

Most days he takes the bus, on his free pass, to the Asda in Cwmbran. “Everyone is so friendly at Asda and they all know me by name,” he said.

Last December, the staff said he had shopped there nearly every day, except Sundays, since the store opened 24 years earlier. To say thank you, they gave him a trolley full of his usual shopping, plus biscuits, mince pies and a yule log. “If I live to 119 I won’t go anywhere else, always Asda,” he said.

In February 2025 he got off the bus in Cwmbran town centre and found an Aldi trolley someone had left behind. He pushed it back to the Aldi on Woodside Road, which the local site Cwmbranlife reckoned was about half a mile. He told the staff that next time he brought one back, he wanted a free bar of chocolate.

Turning 107

Darren Foote, a fellow veteran who helped organise Friday, said Owen doesn’t understand why people make a fuss of him. “He still gets up in the morning, he puts a clean shirt on, puts his tie on, cleans his shoes, and he gets up with purpose,” Foote said.

Someone asked Owen how it felt to be turning 107. “I thought it would be a better world I would be living in,” he said, “but I didn’t think I’d ever make it.”